Artist Spotlight: Su A Chae

"One of the ideas Chae encountered in accounting academia related to information asymmetry and moral hazards. Her interest in how systems manage asymmetry and visibility has carried over into her painting. For Chae, balance is a site of resistance rather than neutrality. Creating paradoxical spatial propositions and working with contextual ambiguity, Chae creates a visual field that is simultaneously familiar and unsettled."

"The work emerges from lived experience shaped by movement across cultural contexts, where belonging is continually recalibrated rather than assumed. Balance, in this sense, is not a static condition but an active process-maintained through adjustment, negotiation, and care. Drawing from subtle references to Korean cultural memory-including tiger patterns derived from minhwa, traditional Korean folk painting-I layer figural elements, patterns, and fragmented forms into dense visual compositions."

Su A Chae integrates a business and accounting background with an MFA in Painting to explore how systems manage asymmetry and visibility. Her paintings respond to lived experience of movement across cultural contexts and continuous recalibration of belonging. Balance functions as an active form of resistance maintained through adjustment, negotiation, and care. Chae constructs paradoxical spatial propositions and embraces contextual ambiguity to create visual fields that feel both familiar and unsettling. Layered figural elements, patterns, and fragmented forms incorporate subtle references to Korean cultural memory, including tiger patterns derived from minhwa, resulting in dense, textured compositions.

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